The Poet Pleads with His Friend for Old Friends
Though you are in your shining days,Voices among the crowdAnd new friends busy with your praise,Be not unkind or proud,But think about old friends the most:Time's bitter flood will rise,Your beauty perish and be lostFor all eyes but these eyes.
Words in this poem
- unkind a.
- Having no race or kindred; childless. [See Kin kindred.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Poet Pleads with His Friend for Old Friends is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Wind Among the Reeds, Project Gutenberg ebook #32233; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. B. Yeats, The Poet Pleads with His Friend for Old Friends, in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32233, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wind-among-reeds/the-poet-pleads-with-his-friend-for-old-friends.html, id L04544.
Form and metre
The Poet Pleads with His Friend for Old Friends is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABAB-C-C daysA · crowdB · praiseA · proudB · most · riseC · lost · eyesC
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Though you are in your shining days, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Voices among the crowd | 6 | /˘···· |
| And new friends busy with your praise, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Be not unkind or proud, | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| But think about old friends the most: | 8 | ········ |
| Time's bitter flood will rise, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Your beauty perish and be lost | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| For all eyes but these eyes. | 6 | ······ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.